Which kind of mindfulness meditation to choose?

Posted on May 8, 2014

Let's say you want to be more mindful - that is, cul­ti­vate inten­tional, non-judgmental atten­tion to each moment. Med­i­ta­tion is the core of mind­ful­ness, but there are many dif­fer­ent forms of med­i­ta­tion. Which one is best for you?

That's the ques­tion tack­led in a new study pub­lished in the jour­nal Mind­ful­ness. Over the span of three weeks, the researchers broke 141 under­grad­u­ates into three groups that each engaged in one of these forms of mind­ful­ness meditation:

- The sit­ting med­i­ta­tion, which involves sit­ting in a relaxed but erect pos­ture and cul­ti­vat­ing aware­ness of each breath you take.

- The body scan, which entails method­i­cally pay­ing atten­tion to each part of your body, from top to bottom.

The study found that Yoga improved well-being more than sit­ting med­i­ta­tion and body scan, which the authors argue may be linked to "long­stand­ing evi­dence that phys­i­cal exer­cise pro­motes psy­cho­log­i­cal health" and well-being, rather than specif­i­cally mindfulness.